Category Archives: italian

This isn’t a terrible book but it has ruined one of my favourite plays of all time for me. I hope the effects will wear off because Much Ado About Nothing is my go to audio play when I’m in a grey mood.

Firstly is a prequel for Much Ado justified? Yes I think it is. Everytime I listen to or read the play I always linger over Beatrice’s words to Don Pedro in the masked ball of Act II.

DON PEDRO

Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of
Signior Benedick.

BEATRICE

Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave
him use for it, a double heart for his single one:
marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,
therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.

If Shakespeare had been writing in the modern age this would have been the scene that spawned a thousand fanfics. As it was I was very receptive to read an interpretation of Beatrice and Benedick’s failed first relationship and so approached the book with an open mind. At first I was pleasantly surprised. Foriolo’s approach to the faintly vague setting of the play was to set it firmly in the real world with a heady blend of Italian landscape and lush descriptions of summer. It was a beautiful introduction to medieval Italy and I read passages slowly to savour the atmosphere.

The story is set in the year of 1588 when Beatrice, Princess of Verona, is visiting her Uncle Leonato as a companion to his daughter Hero. Sicily is under control of the Spanish and Don Pedro enlists Benedick in the world of politics and intrigue simmering underneath the seemingly idyllic setting. I was happy that Benedick was a bit of a loser and Beatrice was uncomfortably prickly and awkwardly so but they did start to grate on me in a way the original versions never could. There were also lots of things that I enjoy in historical fiction like women fighting duels, politics and intelligent banter.

“If I am the knight, then I thank you for my gage.” She favoured me with a soldier’s grin. “But now our joust is at an end, and I am the victor, I have the honour to return it.” She nodded to my plate as she turned to go, and spoke her parting riposte over her shoulder. “If you have no more stomach, Lady, you had better turn your trencher. Farewell.”

But then came the huge red mark against the story. The subplot of the Moors. The Spanish accelerate their expulsion of the Moors in Sicily and this is mostly illustrated to us through Beatrice’s relationship with a mixed race lady called Gugliema Crollalanza and a random man she sees on the sand dunes. The problem with using atrocities against People of Colour to add depth to a romantic story between two white people shouldn’t even need explaining about. After Gugliema is burnt to death and the story goes straight back to Beatrice and Benedick and the petty misunderstandings in their romance I just didn’t care about them anymore. Especially when Benedick who has obviously learnt so much from seeing a woman brutally executed nearly hands in a Moor “boy” he comes across thinking excitedly how it’ll help his career seeing as the boy must be a spy. Even worse were the racial stereotypes about the first black man in the book and the fetishising of his relationship with a white woman.

I was cringing reading this book and seeing all the big name positive reviews on the cover I have to wonder. Did the reviewers not notice the problematic elements and racial stereotypes? Or worse, did they notice it and just not care.

Nineteenth-century Europe abounds with conspiracy both ghastly and mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian priests are strangled with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate black masses by night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres.

But what if, behind all of these conspiracies, lies just one man?

This is the first Umberto Eco book I have ever read and I went into it blind, having heard nothing about it and read no reviews on it. I think I was expecting some sherlockian thriller written in omniscient third person with the mastermind behind all these conspiracies lurking in the shadows. I was thrown into something completely different.

The book is partly in first person diary form and partly in third person. A man finds he cannot remember who he is and what he has been doing. The story is told from three view points; Captain Simonini, Abbe Dalla Piccola and the mysterious narrator. All three are trying to find out the series of events and each one is an unreliable witness.

Simonini is an unlikeable protagonist and that is understating it. He had no redeeming features and I quite easily despised him. Starting with a very long and passionate rant about every race and culture in europe (which was darkly humourous at how hysterical it was)he settles on one group of Peoples to focus his hatred on; the jews. The book is filled with his bile spewing out with every motive in what he does. The long and cleverly plotted story is filled with real historical figures and events, Simonini being the only fictional character. The way conspiracy and lies has been woven into the fabric of history is extremely disturbing. People have said this is a dangerous book. It is dangerous only if you do not listen to the message Eco illustrates quite clearly. That if this demonisation could happen so subtly ingraining itself into society, that a fabricated, many fabricated documents could persuade people to listen to a man like Hitler what could stop this from happening again? Human nature hasn’t really changed what if this is happening around us right now?

The book is embroidered with history, many different threads and stories intertwined together and also with lavish descriptions of food. Also there are many original illustrations some of which are highly disturbing anti-semitic drawings. The whole effect is one an Victorian novel. Hundreds of events and stories that are historically factual are peppered throughout. I enjoyed the detail Eco went into.

“It was now that marvellous year of 1848. Every student was delighted with the ascension to the papacy of Cardinal Mastai Ferretti- Pius XI- who had granted an amnesty for political crimes two years earlier. The year had begun with the first protests in Milan against the Austrians, where citizens had stopped smoking to damage the revenues of the imperial government (those Milanese comrades, who stood firm when soldiers and police provoked them by blowing clouds of sweet-scented cigar smoke at them, were seen by my Turin companions as heroes).”

This is the most difficult book I have ever read because Eco demands that you educate yourself about the intricacies of the history to read it. I had to force myself to pick it up several times to continue and make myself read a chapter a day. But sometimes I lost myself and three chapters flew by. It is also then one of the most satisfying books I have ever read and I know now more about conspiracy than I did before opening the book. I will definitely be reading another of Uberto Eco’s books; maybe the Name of the Rose; his most well-known work. I might wait a while before diving into another of his books though!